Another four years means another Summer Olympic Games, but this time we head to the Southern Hemisphere and a very hot and balmy Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There will be quite a few willing combatants for the top spot in the gold medal count, but only one country will truly stand out above the rest – the United States.
The country’s training programs and athlete crop always seems to be a little bit more ahead of the game. They may not have to worry about Russia breathing down their necks in the ranks this year either, given their recent doping...

Lowe’s Companies Inc the home improvement retailer based in the U.S. said it had agreed to purchase Rona Inc based in Canada in a deal worth C$3.2 billion or US$2.28 billion.
Lowe’s previous bid was rebuffed by Rona, dealers as well as politicians in Quebec.
The unsolicited proposal for C$1.8 billion by Lowe’s to acquire Rona was withdrawn back in September of 2010. Lowe’s said on Wednesday it had come to an agreement on key commitments that included moving the Canadian business headquarters of Lowe’s to Quebec where the Rona home base...

After the announcement of disappointing earnings results for the latest quarter, BP repeated a commitment it made last month to cut 4,000 jobs this year in its exploration and production unit. The unit lost $728 million in the quarter. The company also said it would trim about 3,000 workers from its marketing and refining business by the end of next year. Before those cuts were announced, BP had a global work force of about 80,000 employees.
BP reported a fourth-quarter loss of $3.3 billion on Tuesday, becoming the latest casualty of the oil industry’s...

A new iPhone 5se is rumored to be in the works and could find just the right spot amongst smartphone users for its size, features and price.
The iPhone 5c could be Apple’s most confusing iPhone made. Released together with its sibling the iPhone 5s back in 2013, the handset that was unapologetically plastic was seen as a less expensive alternative by many to the higher priced flagship and a way for Apple to attack the midrange market share much like the iPod nano did.
However, that did not happen to be the case. The iPhone 5c basically was nothing...

Honda Motor Co posted an operating profit for the third quarter that dropped 22%, which was more than had been expected due to an increase in costs for the massive recall of vehicles worldwide due to air bag problems.
The third largest Japanese automaker is the biggest clients of Takata the air bag manufacturer. Its vehicles represent close to half of the 50 million vehicles recalled around the world because of air bags that exploded with an excessive force and spray the interior of cars with shrapnel, which has led to at least 10 deaths and over...

Apple’s reported results for its fiscal first quarter that showed iPhone sales rose less than 1 percent from a year earlier. The company said it sold 74.8 million iPhones in the quarter ending Dec. 26. Apple sold 74.5 million in the same quarter a year ago. This was the slowest year-over-year growth rate for the device ever. The company is now projecting its first revenue decline in more than a decade.
Analysts predicted that demand for Apple’s latest iPhones, the 6S and 6S Plus, had been weak in the period leading up to the earnings announcement....

On Wednesday, United Technologies Corp reported profit for the fourth quarter that exceeded estimates of Wall Street analysts as the building systems and aerospace manufacturer lowered its costs to counter a global economy that has become sluggish.
UT’s adjusted earnings ended the quarter at $1.53 per share, the company announced in a prepared statement on Wednesday. That compares to analyst estimates of $1.52 per share. Sales ended just over $14.3 billion, which misses the average estimates by analysts of more than $15.3 billion.
United Technologies...

On Thursday, El Salvador urged women leaving in the Central American country to avoid becoming pregnant until 2018 in order to avoid their babies from developing birth defects due to the Zika mosquito borne virus that has rampaged across the Americas.
The Zika virus is carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito that is known to also carry the yellow fever, Chikungunya and dengue viruses.
Health officials are not sure why this virus, which was detected first in 1947 in Africa but not known to the Americas until 2015, is spreading in such a rapid fashion...

The fourth quarter has been a mixed bag for Netflix. The company is achieving record global growth. The company now has a total of 74.76 million subscribers across the globe. Netflix is pushing to make its service available around the world. The company has introduced its service to more than 130 countries, making it available in nearly every country except China.
The company is also facing a slowdown in the United States. Netflix missed growth forecasts in the U.S., adding just 1.56 million subscribers in the quarter. This is a considerable decline...

General Motors has increased its expertise in the ride-sharing/hailing arena.
The Detroit-based automaker hired some employees and purchased the assets of recently shuttered Sidecar Technologies, a ride-sharing/hailing company that closed last month.
According to a company statement, GM has hired employees of Sidecar to integrate them into the urban mobility GM team, and acquired a certain amount of assets to help in the global mobility programs.
A spokesperson for GM did not comment on the deal’s details, including how many employees had been...

Lovers of cashews might need to read this one. Trader Joe’s has issued a recall that went out on January 15 for the product known as Raw Cashew Pieces, due to a possibility of salmonella poisoning.
The company sent an alert out to the supplier that one of its lots of products might have been contaminated by the bacteria.
The products that were affected are those, which have labels reading – BEST BEFORE 07/17/2016F4.
The raw cashew pieces have been distributed to 31 states including Georgia, Kentucky, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and...

General Electric has announced the planned sale of its appliance unit to Chinese manufacturer Haier for $5.4 billion in cash. The deal also includes the 48.4 percent stake that GE Appliances owns in Mexican appliance company Mabe. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2016. The purchase must passes regulatory scrutiny in the US, China and elsewhere before the deal can be completed.
The appliances division had revenue of about $5.9 billion in 2014 and employs 12,000 people. General Electric said the deal valued the appliances unit at 10 times...

On Friday, Xiaomi the China-based smartphone maker announced that it had shipped more than 70 million smartphones during 2015. Although a very high number, it was short of the company’s ambitious target of 80 million.
Growing competition and a high dependence on the market in China were factors that might have contributed to the company missing its target.
The company sold over 34.7 million of its handsets the first six months of the year, and could not reach the targeted 80 million.
Growth in sales of smartphones is starting to slow down across...

Yum! Brands Inc, which operates KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, announced that December sales at same stores were up 1% across China, where a spinoff of operations will take place this year.
Sales at comparable stores for KFC were up 5% in China, said the company based in Louisville, Kentucky in a Tuesday filing.
Although, they fell by 11% for Pizza Hut, sales performance showed an improvement from the numbers in November, when China’s sales dropped by 3%.
Yum!, crumbling under activist investor pressure, announced in October it would spin off its...

Apple has discovered a serious glitch in its Apple News app that has affected counts of users accessing the service. The company disclosed that publishers serving content through the iOS 9 News app have been receiving erroneous traffic data. The glitch has led to an undercounting of the number of users reading a particular new story.
Apple unveiled Apple News at the Worldwide Developers Conference last year. The app is essentially a feed for users to read the news stories that interest them. The platform is designed to share news from publishers...

Ultra talented musician David Bowie has died. The musician’s death was confirmed by his representative who said Bowie was 69.
The singer was battling cancer for over the past year according to a post on his Facebook page. The statement, dated January 10, said that Bowie died peacefully surrounded by family following his 18-month courageous battle with cancer.
Bowie, a songwriter, singer, fashion icon and actor, has been influential in some way to close to every modern artist, from Madonna to Lorde to Lady Gaga to U2.
His influence is felt in new...

Much of the leadership of the White House administration will fly to California and seek the help of tech firms to figure out the way to thwart terrorists who are using the Internet as a way to recruit as well as radicalize people to plan out attacks, said U.S. officials.
Amongst those that are set to attend a Friday meeting with top executives in Silicon Valley are Loretta Lynch the Attorney General, James Comey the FBI Director, Lisa Monaco the counterterrorism adviser, James Clapper Jr. the Director of National Intelligence, Michael Rogers the...

KB Home the homebuilder missed expectations for the most recent quarter ended following deliveries that were softer than had been expected and contract abandonment and inventory impairment charges, though its sales continued to reflect a housing market in recovery.
Shares were down 9.7% trading early Thursday, including that drop, the stock is 27% down the last three months.
The builder based in Los Angeles reported a rise of 24% in its overall revenue ending the quarter at $985.7 million with another quarter of gains in the double-digits in both...

Macy’s executives are not happy with the way the 2015 holiday season went. The company reported that its stores suffered a significant sales decline during the holiday season. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 4.7 percent in November and December, compared with the totals reported during the same period of 2014. According to figures from the MasterCard SpendingPulse, holiday spending overall was up 7.9 percent for the season.
Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren blamed the sales decline on unseasonably warm weather and lower spending by...

Twitter appears as if it is ready to loosen a restriction that goes back a decade on the length of its messages in an attempt to make the service appeal to a broader audience accustomed to the freedom that is offered by social media giant Facebook as well as other forums.
Jack Dorsey a co-founder and current CEO telegraphed the intentions of Twitter in a Tuesday tweet he posted after the Re/Code tech news site reported that Twitter was exploring the increase of its limits on texting from just 140 character up to as high as 10,000.
Dorsey did not...

Ford is launching a few new initiatives to make its vehicles more connected than ever before. The company has announced new plans regarding linking its cars to smart home systems, autonomous driving software, and drones. Ford’s projects will put the company on the cutting edge of car connectivity.
With one project, Ford is working to connect its Sync in-car communications system with smart home packages. This would allow drivers to control smart home systems and security systems from their vehicles, as well as stop, start, lock, and unlock...

The factory activity across the euro zone ended this past year with growth in each of the countries that were included in a survey that was made public on Monday, suggesting that growth in manufacturing over the past year in general averaged above the last three.
However, despite companies cutting their prices for a fourth straight month and a euro that that is weaker, making the manufactured goods across the bloc cheaper abroad, growth remained albeit tepid.
Markit’s final Purchasing Manager’s Index for manufacturing increased to a high of...

Large amounts of dietary sugar, more commonly found in a Western diet, might increase the risk of developing cancer, University of Texas researchers studied mice that were genetically predisposed to cancer of the breast and found those who were fed more sugar had larger tumors in comparison to those receiving less sugar or just starch.
The authors of the study conducted four separate studies in which mice were randomized into diet groups and fed one of four different diets.
The authors of the study said they had been careful to expose the mice to...

They say that no publicity is bad publicity and for Ashley Madison, the site for men who want to have an affair that might very well be the case.
A massive breach of data that exposed information of millions of spouses who were unfaithful apparently has not kept the site from going down.
It turns out that the infamous site that attracts adulterers has added over 4 million new members since the breach became very public, when data was dumped onto the Internet.
This past August, when the breach took place, Ashley Madison claimed it had more than 39...

Tesla has announced that the company would be hiring thousands of new employees over the next few years. Many of these new hires will be based in California and employed on the company’s projects to build an autonomous car. The company currently has about 14,000 employees, more than 14 times the number of employees it counted in 2010.
A few weeks ago, Elon Musk put out a call on Twitter for software engineers for the company’s Autopilot program, saying that prior automotive experience was not needed. Addressing his 3.1 million followers...

Diseases that have been considered rare, nearly wiped out or eradicated, especially across developed nations, are making a surprise and deadly comeback according to a just published study in London.
Referred to by many as Victorian diseases, since they appeared normally during that period, the diseases include scarlet fever, measles, whopping cough and tuberculosis. The NHS in Britain found that these types’ diseases have been significantly increasing over the past five years.
For instance, Public Health England confirmed that scarlet fever cases...

Northrop Grumman Corp won a contract of just over $93 million to manufacture a full-scale demonstrator of an unmanned spy drone, a flying wing that has large counter rotating propellers, which could take off as well as land on frigates, and destroyers, said the Pentagon late this week.
Northrop has worked on the design for this new drone for a number of years under the joint program the company is involved with known as Tern that is led by the Office of Naval Research at the U.S. Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Officials...

The government of the U.S. overturned on Monday its ban of 30 years on gay men donating blood saying they are now allowed to donate 12 months after having their last sexual contact with another male.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that its decision to reverse its policy that is based upon examination of the latest science that shows an indefinite ban is not needed to prevent HIV transmission. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
This move brings in line the U.S. with other countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand,...

JPMorgan Chase & Co has agreed to pay $150 million to resolve a class action lawsuit over its London Whale trading scandal that emerged in 2012. The trading scandal caused a $6.2 billion loss, dropped JPMorgan’s share price by roughly one-quarter, and wiped out more than $40 billion of market value. The settlement was disclosed in papers filed in federal court in Manhattan on Friday.
The lawsuit stemmed from oversight by JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office of traders in the bank’s London office. Shareholders accused JPMorgan...

A major breach of the Juniper Networks computer system has officials in the U.S. worried that the hackers are working for a foreign government that has been able to spy on encrypted communications of the government as well as private companies for the last three years.
The FBI started its investigation of the breach, which involved the hackers installing a back door on the computer equipments, said U.S. officials.
Juniper disclosed the breach on Thursday as well as a security patch that it was urging its customers to use to update all their systems...

Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, has continued on his quest to shake up the company’s executive ranks. On Thursday, several changes were announced to Apple’s senior management team. The announced changes include new leadership in the company’s hardware and marketing divisions.
On Thursday, it was announced that longtime executive Jeff Williams has been promoted to the job of chief operating officer. That position has remained unfilled since 2011. Mr. Williams started his career at Apple in 1998 when he was hired as head of...

Pandora and other free Internet radio services will be required to pay record companies more for the next five years. In a decision closely watched by the music industry and Wall Street, a panel of federal judges, the Copyright Royalty Board, increased the royalties that those companies must pay for streaming music.
The panel ruled that Pandora and other streaming companies must pay record companies 17 cents for every 100 times they play a song when they stream music to listeners who do not pay for subscriptions. The current rate is 14 cents.
The...

Netflix released a new Windows 10 app that is designed to work with a myriad of devices with Windows 10. Added to the Windows Store at Microsoft Wednesday the updated app now supports Windows 10 tablets and PCs from the start and will be able to support Windows 10 smartphones soon, said Netflix in a post on their blog.
The app by Netflix will take advantage of different specifics for Windows 10, such as voice activation through the virtual assistant Cortana by Microsoft.
The new app from Netflix taps into the Universal App concept by Microsoft,...

Merck & Co should not be given the ok to claim Vytorin, its drug for lowering cholesterol, reduces the risk of strokes or heart attack in patients that have coronary heart disease, said an advisory committee on Monday to the United States Food and Drug Administration.
The advisory panel evaluated the data from a trial of 18,000 patients whose results showed the combination treatment of Vytorin, which comprises Zetia as well as simvastatin an older drug that lowers cholesterol reduced rates of stroke, heart attack and death compared to using...

The results of a clinical trial show that combining a treatment referred to as suicide gene therapy with chemotherapy successfully and safely kills tumor cells in the prostate.
The suicide gene therapy involves a technique of genetically modifying cancer cells in the prostate so they will trigger the immune system of the body to attack them.
In this study, which was published this past week, researchers at Houston Methodist Hospital manipulated cancer cells in the prostate through using a mix of viruses as well as adenovirus, which is the virus...

Months after it announced a new Chief Executive who promised to hear feedback from customers, United Airlines responded, it will reintroduce free snacks beginning in February.
Breakfast snacks, which the airline calls a small piece of caramel heavy between crispy wafers, are amongst the free snacks that United will be providing its economy fliers.
The airline has not served any free snacks since 2008. In 2010, Continental merged with United and quit offering snack service just after the merger took place.
Food represents an important part of the...

Researchers in Australia found a way to prevent and stop tooth decay without the need to use the drill and the fill technique.
A study of seven years showed preventive dental care is able to reduce the necessity for any dental fillings by up to 50%.
The study’s lead author Wendell Evans an Associate Professor with University of Sydney said that fillings are not necessary because many decay in teeth do not require it.
The findings have shown that a preventative dental program has more benefits compared with the current technique. The drill and...

One month ago, when TAG Heuer Connected was first launched, there were some people wondering if there was a market for a luxury Android smartwatch that cost $1,500.
Apparently, the answer is yes since TAG Heuer said it must increase its production for the watch to meet its demands.
CEO Jean-Claude Biver from TAG Heuer revealed recently that the production of the smartwatch TAG Heuer Connected would be increased to 2,000 per week from 1,200.
Biver says retailers as well as other sellers have asked for close to 100,000 units and to help meet that...

Anheuser-Busch InBev on Thursday said it was planning to sell several of the premium brands of SABMIller in Europe including Grolsch and Peroni, which it hopes will ease concerns of regulators about the proposed merger of the two brewers.
The move will be the second major sale of assets that the two companies announced as they begin to create a giant in the industry with revenue annually of close to $64 billion that would represent close to 30% of the global beer sales.
The combination will give AB InBev, which is already the largest brewer in the...

Giants in the streaming world like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu are using the secrecy of the streaming industry to their advantage, which is starting to anger the studios that do business with them. The studios are making billion-dollar deals with Netflix, but they have almost no clue how their shows are performing because Netflix will not release the data. This gives streaming companies like Netflix the ultimate bargaining chip.
Because they possess all of the data on how many and what kinds of people watch their TV shows and movies, the streaming...

A consortium of company from China will invest $400 million for a minority share of the Manchester City FC football (soccer) franchise, as buyers from China search the globe for assets involved in entertainment.
Citic Capital Holdings and China Media Capital Holdings are acquiring just more than 13% of the football group that owns Manchester City, which plays in the English Premier League the top professional league in England and other assets related to the sport.
This deal would put a value of $3 billion on the City Football Group. The group is...

Lazard the investment bank is working with management at Sanofi to prepare a sale or a listing of animal health unit Merial. That could value its business at as much as $12 billion euros or $12.7 billion, said source close to the matter.
Lazard will likely win the role for the dual-track process as it is called, having helped management of Sanofi with its ongoing review, said sources speaking on the condition of anonymity.
If this is successful the deal would play a big role in getting the most valuable company in France back on the right track...

British company Raspberry makes learning to program the same price as a double latte.
The new educational micro-computer by Raspberry Pi is the cheapest it has made to date – a device that is pocket-sized designed for teaching kids coding for only $5.
The new Raspberry Pi Zero was unveiled Thursday and is the most recent computer from the company that for the past couple of years has had a mission to make computing accessible to all children that want learn.
Manufactured in Wales, the computer features RAM of 512 MB, an ARM processor that is 1GHz,...

Campbell Soup has announced that it is changing the recipe of its signature chicken noodle soup. The new Campbell’s chicken noodle soup contains 20 ingredients, down from the more than 30 in its previous version. The new recipe is appearing first in a limited-edition line in cans decorated with characters from the soon to be released “Star Wars” film.
Campbell has moved quickly to address changing trends in the food industry. The company is eliminating ingredients that today’s consumers do not want in their food products. Changing consumer...

Tiffany & Co posted a profit for the third quarter that disappointed and cut its forecast for the year as the strong U.S. dollar and the choppy economic conditions weighed on luxury jewelry sales.
Profit reached 70 cents per share, excluding special items, said the company based in New York in a prepared statement on Tuesday.
Analysts were expecting profit of 75 cents. Per share earnings will drop 5% to 10% in 2015, which is more than forecasted earlier for a drop of no more that 5% said the statement.
These results underline the challenge that...

Pfizer has received a lot of pushback over its proposed deal to buy Allergan for $152 billion. The merger itself is not the problem, but what the company plans to do after the merger is complete. Pfizer has revealed plans to move its corporate headquarters to Ireland in order to reduce its tax bill in the United States in a move called a corporate inversion. The merger was announced on Monday.
Corporate inversions happen when an American company buys a company in a country with lower corporate taxes to reduce its tax obligation. It has sparked...

The holiday deals from Microsoft have begun and run until the weekend of Thanksgiving. Some of the digital deals only cost 10 cents.
The latest deals for Black Friday are underway at the software giant.
Microsoft is on a 10 cent kick because of its new operating system Windows 10, which the company said has already passed the 110 million mark for installs.
Therefore, the 10 days of different deals will run through the end of the business day November 29, with prices on certain items as cheap as 10 cents.
Songs, movies and apps are all available...

Starboard Value, the Jeff Smith operated activist fund is urging Yahoo Inc to drop its plan of spinning off its share in Alibaba the e-commerce giant based in China. Starboard said instead that Yahoo should sell its display and search advertising businesses.
The company should maintain its stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, Starboard said in its letter addressed to the board and management of Yahoo dated Thursday.
Yahoo should also hire a strong financial adviser to sell its core businesses, added Starboard.
The market, said Starboard does not have...

Target Corp. reported its results for the August-to-October quarter Wednesday morning. Its profits fell in line with expectations. In the third quarter, Target reported adjusted earnings per share of 86 cents, in line with analysts’ expectations and up from 79 cents a year ago. Net profit grew 56 percent to $549 million. Revenue grew 2.1 percent to $17.6 billion.
The Minneapolis-based retailer reported 1.9 percent growth in same-store sales in the third quarter. Target saw store traffic grow 1.4 percent in the quarter, its fourth consecutive...

Users of Facebook, who at the time of the Friday terrorist attack were in Paris, were able to notify family and friends about their whereabouts and safety through the tool on the social media site know as Safety Check.
Users started receiving notifications that friends who had been in Paris were safe early Friday evening as the people in the French capital were able to check in.
This Safety Check tool was first launched last year and on five occasions has been used.
Its activation on Friday night was the first time it had been activated for a disaster...